1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and an article of manufacture for network protocols.
2. Description of the Related Art
A host system may have a network adapter coupled to the host system for network communications. In certain implementations, the network communications may require the processing of commands related to the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) or any other protocol implemented over IP. A protocol is a set of rules, data formats, and conventions that regulates the transfer of data between communicating processes.
The TCP/IP protocol may be implemented in software as a TCP/IP protocol stack as part of the operating system that is resident on the host system. In such a case, the central processing unit of the host system processes commands that are related to the TCP/IP protocol.
Some network adapters may provide hardware support for processing commands related to the TCP/IP protocol. Drivers for such network adapters may provide new interfaces for applications that use the TCP/IP protocol for network communications. Applications that work with network adapters that do not provide hardware support for the TCP/IP protocol stack may have to be rewritten to use the new interfaces. Furthermore, if the network adapter provides hardware support for the TCP/IP protocol stack, changes may be required to the existing TCP/IP protocol stack on the host system for offloading processing related to the TCP/IP protocol stack to the network adapter.